In this vlog Ryan Shank walks viewers through a hectic week as his startup PhoneWagon approaches its Demo Night at the New York Tech Meetup. He details intensive pitch rehearsals for a stage presentation before 400‑500 attendees, the logistical shift from a theater rehearsal to an office run‑through, and the pressure of delivering a product‑only demo without slides. Concurrently, Ryan discusses the difficulty of acquiring new customers during a period crowded with industry conferences (Ad Week, HubSpot Inbound), describing his direct‑marketing experiments with door hangers, postcards, and varying offers to boost call conversions. He demonstrates a live activation of a PhoneWagon account, explaining how users can test different headlines and offers within the platform. Ryan also reflects on the final week of the Techstars accelerator, highlighting the program’s impact and sharing the company’s rapid growth from $2,000 to $9,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) over three months. The vlog blends behind‑the‑scenes startup life, practical marketing advice, and motivational commentary for fellow founders.
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Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.
Alright, bye.
Yeah, absolutely. What up, guys? Alright, so we are about to do the vlog for today. We did a lot of pitch practice this day because we're gonna do our pitch for Demo Night just about 2 days. You guys are gonna see that vlog. It was actually super, super awesome. And so we were practicing for the pitch because we're gonna go on stage in front of 400 people at the New York Tech Meetup. So I wanted to get that thing right. Plus I was talking to a bunch of customers this day and we're just trying to like salvage the week. Honestly, it's been a pretty down week so far. So we're trying to just get a lot of customers in the door because it's kind of weird. A lot of, there's a lot of conferences right now. So there's a lot of like ad tech, Ad Week, and then there's a HubSpot has an inbound conference in Boston this week. So a lot of the people we're going after are like away right now. So it's kind of frustrating, but we're going after it. And you guys will see here soon. $25 billion annually to generate phone calls. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, actually.
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, son. Okay, awesome.
Yeah, the 817. Yeah, the 817. You just gotta stick with you, so just fill out the support process and then we can get that in there, okay?
Alright.
Thanks, Mike, appreciate it.
Alright, bye.
Yeah, absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Hey guys, we are going to, tomorrow night we're going to go to the New York Tech Meetup meetup. All of Techstars companies are going to be doing a demo on stage for like 500 people that are going to this meetup. It's a special New York Tech— whoa, bottles are dropping. We're going to do a practice run. There's no slides, it's just actual product. So we're going to head there now. We're going to catch some B-roll on the way there. We're going to see you guys there. Actually, we're just going to time travel there. Okay, so I'm going to be there in like 3 seconds. 1, 2— okay, uh, change of plans. I just time traveled, but we didn't go there. We're still at our actual office because there's a change of plans. We're not actually doing the rehearsal at the theater where the actual demo night is gonna be. So we're actually just doing the rehearsal like literally just down there, like in our office. Like, we're just, we're just not.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the thing that's good is it just gives you that level of detail of like, all right, you know, I'm printing door hangers, I'm printing these postcards, and, and then you'll find out like, wow, these postcards didn't result in anything. But the thing is, you might find some postcards that resulted in some jobs, and then the next time you could even test like the subject or even like the, the copy of the header of postcards. Like maybe right now you're sending out like an offer, like a discount or something, and people are responding to it. But maybe you're like, okay, I got some calls, but how can I get even more calls? And maybe you want to do like a 2-for-1 deal, or maybe you want a different offer. And now you're able to start testing different like headlines and different like offers to, to get even more, like a higher call conversion on phone calls. Yeah, you can actually grab them from inside the account. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm just gonna activate the account. So you just tell me like the email address you want to use for your username, and then it's $25 $5, so just whatever credit card, and then I'll send you your username and password. You can literally log in right now. I can stay on the phone with you.
If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey.
We're building PhoneWagon from the ground up, no outside funding, and we're going through Techstars. It's the last week of Techstars. There's literally 2 days left of Techstars in New York City. It was a minute— it's honestly been like an amazing, life-changing program, so it was really, really cool. To go through that experience and to share it with you guys was actually amazing. And I loved getting the feedback and giving you kind of like an inside look into like what a seed stage startup is doing to build their company. And we made a lot of progress, went from $2,000 to $9,000 in MRR, um, in just 3 months. So there's a lot of, a lot of progress, a lot of stuff to do still, obviously. Um, so anyway, I hope you guys are out there building your companies, working hard, being pioneers, being wagoners. See ya!
